More than one million Danes visit ekstrabladet.dk every week and the site now has 5,500 active subscribers with 40% already converted from the free trial, paying DKK 29 (€4) per month.

According to Lisbeth Langwadt, head of editorial at EKSTRA, "Quality journalism is in focus at EKSTRA, and fortunately it pays off. It is crucial that disclosures, detective journalism, crime investigation, critical consumer journalism, politics and sports are core EKSTRA components."

Of course this is just one part of news site's identity - and freemium content includes extended lifestyle coverage and the famous daily page 9 girl.

One of the subscription offering's unique features is the easy 'stop-start' button. "We want to ensure that our subscribers don’t fear subscribing to EKSTRA, worrying about unfair or fuzzy conditions," says Astrid Jørgensen, head of commercial at EKSTRA.

Many other tabloid news websites will be following Ekstra Bladet's progress with interest, for example the Sun in the UK, which will launch a paywall in August, or Bild in Germany which launched a similar 'Bild Plus' content model four weeks after EKSTRA.

These are still early days and Ekstra Bladet Editor-in-Chief Poul Madsen admits that "national and international learnings demonstrate that creating a well-functioning and highly-profitable digital subscription plan is going to be a long haul." But for now, he and his team are content with their progress.

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The World Editors Forum is the organisation within the World Association of Newspapers devoted to newspaper editors worldwide. The Editors Weblog (www.editorsweblog.org), launched in January 2004, is a WEF initiative designed to facilitate the diffusion of information relevant to newspapers and their editors.